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…………………………………………………………….

Adam awoke refreshed.

He washed and dressed.  Instantly Itzi
appeared.

‘These are for you.’

And Adam took the red velvet bags that he
had been given.

‘Come, it is time for
Shacharit
,
the morning service.’

Adam followed the servant to the hall where
the others awaited him.  Each of them wore a
Tallit
, the woollen prayer
shawl, and the
Tefillin
boxes.

He opened the larger of the velvet bags
and removed the Tallit that he knew was his.  Like the undergarment he had been
given yesterday it too had knotted strings at each corner and each string was
laced with a sky-blue thread.  Itzi showed him how to wrap himself in the
garment and told him the words of blessing that he had to say.

Then he opened the second bag containing
the small leather boxes of his
Tefillin
.  One box he placed on his upper
arm and the other upon his head.  Again he said the appropriate blessing.

‘Now we can pray.’

……………………………………

With the service over they breakfasted
upon nothing more than slices of toast and then they resumed their studies.

‘Between the worlds lie the abyss, the
Tohu, the Vohu, a sea, and waters.  The waters are the upper waters and the
lower waters.  Each is the counterpart of the other.  To cross between the
worlds you traverse all or none or only some of the barriers.  What comprises
the abyss, Adam?’

But Adam did not know.

‘So you shall learn.’

And so it began.

Each day the routine was the same. 
Prayer, food, study.

Adam became versed in so many ancient
texts including Talmud, Midrash and those myriad works of mysticism and
Kabbalah that unlocked the hidden secrets of the universe; that opened the way
to an understanding of THAT WHICH NO MAN MAY KNOW to remain sane.

The days became weeks and the weeks,
months, but Adam still laboured in his studies.  He read books that had long
been lost or destroyed in his own world, the Heled.  He grasped the meaning of
tomes that had never existed in the worlds of men.

He learnt of the beginning of all things;
of the first instant of the first day.  He learnt of the awakening of the
primordial beast that now had the effrontery to call itself En Sof, the
infinite, and knew that in some part of his prior life he had met this creature
and that it was in his nemesis.  It was his duty to send the thing back to the
limbo from which it came.

And so the years passed and Adam
continued, becoming a vessel filling with knowledge and wisdom.

He learnt how to cross the folds into each
of the seven Earths.  The path was clear.  There was a way to leave Tevel and
enter Yabbashah, the next world and he knew that was what he had to do.  The
route was so simple.  He could see it before him; a vast obsidian cliff with
the gateway clearly marked by King David’s shield, the six pointed star formed
by crossing two equilateral triangles.  It was time for him to leave.

Adam called the Haham.

‘I am ready.’

‘Are you?’ smiled the teacher, ‘Then tell
me your name.’

But Adam could not.

‘You have more to study.  Call me only
when you know who you are.’

‘But how shall I know this?’

‘When the time is right you shall know.

‘Now listen, I will tell you a
moshal
^[20]
.

‘Once in the world of Heled there was a
very poor man.  His name was Reuven ben Tuvia, a simple tailor by trade.

‘Now Reuven ben Tuvia may have been a poor
man but he was also a happy man.  He was happy because there was nothing he
desired; he was content; but there was another reason that he was happy.  He
was happy because of the birds.

‘Every morning Reuven ben Tuvia would put
out the leftovers of his previous day’s food and the birds would eat.  Not only
that, Reuven ben Tuvia would always put food out for the birds even when that
did not leave him anything to eat himself.

‘From far and wide the birds would fly to
Reuven ben Tuvia’s little hovel where they dined upon sumptuous food until one
day a nightingale arrived.  This nightingale sang its song to perfection.  It
was a wonder to listen to its tune and Reuven ben Tuvia told everyone about the
wondrous bird that visited his home every day and like all his avian friends
would eat from out of his hands.

‘It was not long before the news of Reuven
ben Tuvia’s tame nightingale reached the ears of the king himself and his
majesty dispatched his Chief Minister to acquire the bird at any price.  It
would make an ideal gift for the king’s son, the prince, to present to the
mother of his bride to be.

‘The Chief Minister arrived at the hovel. 
He could see that Reuven ben Tuvia was not a wealthy man and knew that even the
smallest offer would seem like a fortune to him.  He could get away with
anything and retain the balance for himself.

‘So he made an offer of only a few pounds.

‘“She is not for sale,” Reuven ben Tuvia
replied.

‘The Chief Minister increased his offer
but still it was rejected.

‘“How can I sell one of my friends?  The
birds are free.  They do as they want.  They are not mine to sell.”

‘So again the Chief Minister increased his
offer and again Reuven ben Tuvia rejected it.  The Chief Minister was desperate
now and knew that the King could not be denied.  So he made an offer that he
knew could not be rejected and promised Reuven ben Tuvia wealth beyond his
wildest dreams...and Reuven ben Tuvia succumbed to temptation and sold the bird
that was not his to sell.

‘Now Reuven ben Tuvia lived like a king
and hated it and all the time he thought of the little nightingale, feeling
guilty.

‘Now he could afford servants and he sent
his servants to the court of the king to see if he could repurchase the
nightingale and return the freedom which had been stolen from it.

‘But the nightingale now belonged to the
Princess and she loved the bird and would not let it go for anything...at least
not for anything cheap.

‘“What would you take to give up the
bird?” asked Reuven ben Tuvia directly of the Princess.

 ‘“I would give up the bird if you paid me
twice as much in riches as the richest person alive,” replied the greedy
Princess.

‘But how was he to do this.  As rich as he
was he could not amass such wealth.

‘“Please, you ask the impossible.  There
must be something else.”

‘The Princess laughed, “All right.  Return
to me when you have amassed your riches and I will see if it is enough.”

‘So Reuven ben Tuvia returned to his home
in despair.

‘“Why do you grieve so?” asked a sparrow
and Reuven ben Tuvia told what he had been asked to get by the spoilt Princess.

‘“But that is no reason to grieve.  I fly
all over the world and I know where there are untold riches.  We all will help
you.”

‘And every single bird flew off and each
returned one day later carrying a gleaming diamond in its beak.

‘Soon Reuven ben Tuvia had amassed thousands
of precious stones and he decided to return to the Princess.

‘“Wait, Reuven ben Tuvia,” said the
sparrow, “Do not be in such a hurry.”

‘“But, surely I have enough?”

‘“Have you?  Remember what the Princess
really wants.  Twice as much as the richest person alive.”

‘“But how much is that?”

‘“That is impossible to know, but you must
not fail to amass sufficient wealth.  We will collect more.”’

‘And Reuven ben Tuvia understood.

‘Do you, Adam?’

Adam nodded, ‘But when will it ever be
enough?’

The Haham smiled enigmatically, ‘We shall
see, we shall see.’

In frustration Adam returned to his
studies.  He already had a long beard.  His face was lined.  How many more
years would pass before he could continue his mission?  He had to find five
crystals and he knew where they were.  If he waited longer it would be too
late.

No, it was time.  He knew what he had to
do.  Then why did he not know who he was?  But it was no good.  Maybe he should
leave this place without permission and go where?  Their island was surrounded
by the Lake of Forgetfulness.  If he entered those waters he would lose all
this knowledge he had gained and would have to start again.  He would have to
wait.

More years were to pass.  Adam was
becoming an old man.  He was frail; his eyes were dimming and he lay on his bed
to prepare himself for death.  He looked back down the ages and thanked God
that his memory was still clear.  His life had been good.  He had served the
Lord to the best of his ability and he knew there had been a time when he did not
even believe in God.  He smiled to himself.  Oh, the follies of youth.  That
had been when he had been a different person living in the world of Heled.  How
different it was from the paradise of Tevel.

How could Jake Tranton have been like
that?

Jake Tranton!

But it was too late now.  Jake Tranton was
someone who had lived an eternity ago.  Adam’s life was over.  He could die in
peace.

He closed his eyes and awaited the end.

Chava Tashlich knew that something was
wrong.  Something was very wrong indeed.  She could feel it with every ounce of
her being.  She had felt it from the moment that her husband had walked through
the door with his student, Shmueli, under his wing.  She had felt it but she
had not said anything.  She knew just how much scorn Yisroel would heap upon
her fears.

Great Rabbi that Yisroel Tashlich thought
he was; so great and so blind that he could not believe in things that had been
the backbone of Judaism for hundreds of years; things about which her
grandparents had taught her since she had been a little girl.

‘Superstition, Chava,’ he would say,
‘Peasant superstitions of the shtetl.  Forget it all.  There are no such things
as evil spirits or dybbuks.’

But there were.  Chava knew it.  She had
seen them.  She had the
Sight
.

Booba
and
Zeida
used to call
it the
Ayin Ha’rah
, the Evil Eye.  They, who had been full of the tales
of their own parents, newly arrived in New York from the Pale, knew that their
grand-daughter was different.  They had been afraid of her at first but they
came to accept that her ability was a gift and not something of darkness. 

Chava well knew that her gift had saved
her life when she was just two years old.  Her parents had died in the fire. 
It was arson, they said, some anti-Semitic group; but Chava had screamed the
place down and had not been taken to the ill-fated shul that day.

That was the first time anyone saw that
she had the gift.

And now she could feel it again.

Death.

Darkness.

A spirit of Evil.

It was here and somehow Shmueli had
brought it.

Chava had suspected something when Yisroel
had told her of Shmueli’s experiences and she had sensed that Shmueli was not
alone when he had come looking for her husband but now there could be no
doubt.  The feeling was so strong, so intense.

There was a presence in their house and it
was waiting for something.  Thank God the children were out.

She could not fight the feeling.  It was
so oppressive.  What did it want; this thing of darkness?  She could hold back
no longer.  She would tell Yisroel her fears.  She would ride out his derision
and persuade him to turn Shmueli out from the house.

Chava climbed the stairs and entered her
husband’s office.  There was his computer, its screen gently humming but it was
dark, no image upon it.  But where was Yisroel?

She had heard him come upstairs.  He had
not come down, had he?

‘Yisroel?’

But there was no answer.

‘Yisroel?’

Panicking now.

Where was he?

The house was feeling cold, so cold.

The weight of her knowledge was piling
upon her.  She was alone with a man possessed by evil.

And there was something else.

A certainty.  A terrifying certainty.  The
spirit was as aware of her as she was of it.

It wanted her dead.

Chava drew in her breath.  How difficult
it seemed.  As if the air was full of broken glass.  But she had to know.

Downstairs, in her lounge, sat what
appeared to be a young man.  Inside him was something else.  She had to face
that something.

Chava made up her mind.

Slowly, ever so slowly, she walked down
the stairs.

She reached the door of the lounge, wide
open like a monstrous maw, and stopped.

She bit her lower lip and passed across
the threshold.

It was as if she had walked into the
arctic.  It was cold, so cold.  She could hardly see through the grey and icy
mists that shrouded the room.

No, she could not face it.  She had to
escape.

But Chava was frozen where she stood.  Her
legs would not work.

Which was when something began to appear
within the fog.  It was dark.  It was grey.  It was like night and thunder and
tar and evil; all rolled together.

It had form; it had substance.  It had a
smell like every stinking rotting thing imaginable and it wanted to make her
its tool.

Something like a hand reached out towards
her and Chava Tashlich screamed.

She screamed with a shriek that was like
no scream she had ever sounded.  She screamed because that was all that was
left for her to do.

……………………………………

Rabbi Tashlich stood in the hallway trying
to make sense of his feelings of foreboding.  It was not like him to believe in
the supernatural.  It had to be all this talk of Kabbalah that had unnerved
him.

Come on; he told himself.  Stop being
ridiculous.

And then he heard the most terrified
scream that he could imagine.  It sounded like Chava.  It was coming from the
lounge where Shmueli had been left.

Dear God, what was happening?

Without further thought he pelted into the
house and through the lounge door that slammed behind him.  He whirled around
but there was no-one there.  He turned back but the room was empty.  Neither
Shmueli nor Chava were within.

But that was impossible.  He had heard the
scream.

The Rabbi reached for the door-knob and
twisted it.  The door would not open.  He was locked in.  This made no sense
whatsoever.

‘Hey,’ he shouted, ‘Stop playing games. 
Let me out.’

‘Let you out?’

It came from behind him.  Tashlich twisted
about and caught a glimpse of something as he moved.  The room however was
still empty.

‘Yisroel.’

Chava.  Where was she?

‘Chava?’

‘Yisroel.  I’m over here.’

It came from the direction of the
windows.  But there was no-one there.

‘Please, Yisroel.  Help me.  Please.’

‘Please, Hashem.  Guide me.  What’s
happening?’

But there was no heavenly answer.  Rabbi
Yisroel Tashlich was alone.

Completely.

He walked towards the window.

The drapes began to close.

He stopped.

So did they?

He moved again and the heavy lined
curtains rapidly shut out the light until he was plunged into almost total
darkness.

Which was when the laughter began.

It came from every direction together. 
Mocking and inhuman.  Laughter that grated through his nerves.

He had to be strong.  He had to fight the
fear but he could feel his mind losing control.

He reached the window and pulled at the
drapes.  They would not budge but there was a slither of light.  A bare crack
and a shadow moved within it.  There was something outside.

Tashlich knew what to do.  The coffee
table.  There was an onyx paperweight upon it.  He could smash the glass.

He knew where the table was.  He could
make it out in the dim light.  There was the weight, shaped like a baboon.  He
had always thought it hideous.  Well, now it could be of use.

But even as he reached out to it.  The
paperweight began to rise.

This could not be happening.  It had to be
his imagination.

Imagination or no.  The monkey was level
with his face, glowing greenly and grinning at him like some unholy demon; and
then he understood its task.

He raised his hands in defence, barely in
time to escape the blow.  He pushed the revolting ornament away and ran towards
the locked door.

‘Chava.  Let me out.’

‘But, Yisroel, I’m here.  Why do you
shout?’

‘Please, no.  Enough.  Leave me alone. 
Please.’

And then came the breathing.  Hot, humid,
breathing.  Right behind him.

He whirled and reached out his hands.  An
instinctive gesture.  Mindlessly, he clasped hold of a neck and saw the face of
his wife.

‘Chava!’

He dropped his hands.

‘But, how.’

‘Yisroel.  That was not very nice, was
it?’

But it did not even sound like her.  It
was the voice of something infinitely old.  The voice of something that knew
too much.

And in the hand of his wife there was
clutched a needle-thin knife.  He hardly had time to realise that it was the
letter opener kept on the sideboard before the weapon slashed down towards him.

He dodged away and blocked the thrust with
his arm.  That was lucky.  He reached, grabbed and twisted and the knife was
his.  But still she advanced.  The paperweight, her cudgel.

‘Chava.  Stop it.  It’s me Yisroel.’

But the laughter from her throat belonged
to the adversary.  If that had been Chava, her mind was no longer her own.

Now all the Rabbi could do was to fight
for survival.

Her eyes glared into his.  Huge and
staring, reaching into his soul and he knew that they were hypnotising him,
like a snake snaring its prey.

Which was exactly what he was.

He wanted to shut them out but he could
not.  They were commanding.  He had to obey.

The Rabbi called again upon his maker.  He
drew upon those hidden reserves of strength that all mankind had available in a
crisis and forced his arm to rise.  Slowly, straining every muscle, he lifted
the stiletto and focused his aim.

He focused upon the hazel corona and the
wide pupil that was imposing its will upon him.  He knew what he had to do.

With all his power, he plunged into that
wide staring eye; straight through the centre of the eyeball, straight through
the optic nerves and deep into the brain behind.  Hot living blood rained down
upon his arm but the thing that had once been his wife was not yet dead. 
Impossibly, it was still trying to attack.

Desperately, he pulled out the thin
blade.  There was a faint squelch and the eye came with it.  Right out of its
socket, harpooned like a pickled egg.

The socket, dark, crimson and vacant,
still looked at him but he had broken the spell.  He was free to move again.

But this time he was too late.  The paperweight
was already descending.  He hardly heard the blow as it crashed into his
skull.  There was no pain even, just a dizziness that spun him to the floor.

Somehow, he was still conscious.  Chava
was there, towering over him like a demon from Hell and he knew that he could
fight no longer.  His hand unclasped and the knife dropped from his fingers.

All he could do was to watch and wait.

Chava reached down and took up the blade. 
She raised it high and kneeled down towards his face.  All he could see was the
blood filled socket from which hung gristle and glistening pink ganglia and
then, as blood poured over him from that gaping wound he understood the
creature’s intent.

An eye for an eye.

That’s what the Torah said.

Chava gently, gracefully even, reached
down and inserted the tip of the blade.  He could feel its excruciating sting
as it went between the lower eyelid and the creaminess of the eyeball.

Oh the pain.  It was unendurable.

And with a flip his eye was gone, rolling
somewhere on the floor.

He did not know what hurt more.  The crack
in his skull or the enormity of what had been wrought upon his face.  If only
he could lose consciousness.

But even that comfort was impossible.  He
watched helplessly as Chava retrieved his eye and lifted it triumphantly.  She
held it there, almost lovingly, and then did something quite unbelievable.  She
inserted it within her own vacant socket and she stood there gloating down at
him with two odd eyes, one brown and the other blue rimmed with scabrous
blood.  The knife she still held, poised above his face.

She moved no longer

And then, finally, her legs gave way and
her inanimate corpse dropped the knife towards her husband’s head.

……………………………………

Shmueli looked up.

Again, he had lost consciousness.  He had
to get a grip on himself.  Where was he?  The Rabbi’s house.  He had not moved.

And then he turned and saw the frozen
tableau before the door.  Two bodies.  The wife’s on the top facing down.

Mesmerised, Shmueli stood and walked
towards the victims.  What had happened to them?  Who had done this thing?

Nervously, he reached down to turn Mrs
Tashlich over.  As he did so there was a plop.  Something had dropped to the
ground.

Startled, he stopped and saw what it was.

An eye.  A clear blue eye still settling
on the carpet.

Something snapped.

Shmueli had had enough.  With no further
thought he tore open the door and charged from the room into the hall and out
onto the street.

Blindly, he ran.  Where, he did not know. 
He just had to get away from that terrible scene.  If only his guardian angel
were here.  It would know what he should do.

‘I’m here.  Of course I’m here.  Stop
running.  Your enemy did this.  You must destroy him.’

And Shmueli understood.  His enemy.  That
was Professor Benjamin Tiferet.  He was responsible.  He would pay for this.

Oh yes, the Bent Ferret would pay.